On the robustness of laissez-faire

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kocherlakota, Narayana; Phelan, Christopher
• 署名单位: University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2008.09.004
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 2372-2387
• 关键词: Mechanism design; Robustness

摘要

This paper considers a model economy in which agents are privately informed about their type: their endowments of various goods and their preferences over these goods. While preference orderings over observable choices are allowed to be correlated with an agent's private type, we assume that the planner/government is both uncertain about the nature of this joint distribution and unable to choose among multiple equilibria of any given social mechanism. We model the planner/government as having a maxmin objective in the face of this uncertainty. Our main theorem is as follows: Once we allow for this kind of uncertainty and assume no wealth effects in preferences, the uniquely optimal social contract is laissez-faire, in which agents trade in unfettered markets with no government intervention of any kind. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.